Unit (“Challenge”) Coins

Many units in the U.S. Army have coins. These coins probably came into common use sometime in the 1970’s or 1980’s, and were generally given out by the unit commander as a sort of “on the spot” award for performance or as gifts to visitors to the unit. In addition to the more standard “Commander’s Coin”, there were sometimes Command Sergeant Major’s coins. Another subset were coins commemorating specific events such as Operation Desert Storm.

We are in the process of collecting images of all the units coins within or near the 3d Armored Division. In some cases, we have more than one face for a given unit coin. We will try to present as many as possible over time. Please note that there are many images on this page: it may take a couple minutes to fully display on your screen. Also, the coins are arranged in a generally brigade structure. Thus, 1st Brigade would precede 2d Brigade, and the units within 1st Brigade would fall after 1st Brigade but before 2d Brigade. We are also attempting to present all variations of unit coins. Two examples here are the 3d Armored Division coin (three variants) and the 122d Main Support Battalion (three variants, one of which is larger than “standard”).

If you have a related 3AD coin that you do not see here (including variants), we would very much appreciate an image of that coin. If you email us such an image, please scan the coin at about 300 dpi in a format such as *.tif or *.bmp. If you send the image as a *.jpg, please keep the resolution and quality settings high so that we will have enough image data to make a decent web presentation. When you scan the coin, please send each side of the coin as a separate file. The address to send to is Page Author.

The images below came from the private collections of members of the Association of 3d Armored Division Veterans. We greatly appreciate their help in completing this page.